Spark
by tofsla
Summary: Kaoru and Rei go dancing. Ambiguously AU, Kaoru/Rei, everyone is an adult and no-one is dead yet.


_Notes: Ambiguously AU. Kaoru and Rei go dancing, literally and euphemistically._

* * *

Rei has to climb the fence around the house, and she finds herself paused at the top for a moment - just a moment - with the pressure of one of its sharp metal points at her wrist. An accident could happen very easily, couldn't it? That would be- but she is here with a purpose of sorts. Besides, the blood would quite ruin her shirt.

She curls her hand around a safer piece of metal, and slips down into the shadows of trees in the garden. This place needs better security. She could tell them, if she cared to, but she doesn't. Why should she?

Kaoru's window is the third one along on the first floor. Rei counted, the one and only time she went inside. She picks out a stone from her pocket with care, small and smooth, and flings it easily - true and a little too hard. The glass make a sharp cracking noise; it doesn't shatter, and in the dark she can't see if it's damaged, but it wouldn't surprise her.

The curtains pull back. Kaoru, wrapped in a dressing gown. She looks out, half-turns as if to speak to someone else inside, takes one more glance out - did she look straight down at Rei? - and pulls the curtains across the window with a sharp motion, nothing of the invalid's delicacy. Good.

Rei leans back against a tree, lights a cigarette, waits, and stills herself after the unexpected start that actually seeing Kaoru gave her, after so long. There is a kind of peace here, in what she fondly thinks of as the enemy camp; a distance from everything. She's feeling good, detached, floating free from her life. It's almost euphoric. Thank you, Doctor Henmi, for your wide grounds and good neighbourhood and dogs that can't be bothered to leave their kennels for less than a full revolt.

* * *

When Kaoru appears she has a heavy outdoor coat pulled around her in place of her gown, and boots on her feet. Practical as ever. She looks alright. Her eyes are very tired, though.

"You'll be the death of me, Rei," she says, and smiles, a quick spark of life.

"Bad joke," Rei tells her, and takes a deep drag from her cigarette. "I like it."

"Rei," Kaoru says, with a friendly sort of exasperation, and the cigarette is plucked from between Rei's fingers, tossed to the ground and stamped out.

"Hey!" Rei exclaims. "They're not cheap, you know." She's in the middle of fumbling for another one, because it seems urgent that her hands are occupied, when Kaoru's fingers slide along her jaw and Kaoru's mouth covers hers.

This is not what she planned. This is exactly what she planned. This is exactly what she wants and Henmi and all his warnings about health and longing looks after Kaoru whenever she turns away from him can go fuck himself; he's had his chance. The lazy pleasure of kissing Kaoru here and now is enough to make her want more, and more and more.

She is a creature of addictions.

She likes to indulge herself.

She kisses Kaoru, slides a hand into her hair, cradles her skull, dizzy and aroused.

She is a world away from her problems. Floating free. High and distant.

"You're drunk," Kaoru murmurs suspiciously against her mouth.

"Amongst other things," Rei says. "You should try some of them sometime." She lets her head fall back against the rough, solid tree-trunk, and tries to see stars through the clean, bare outlines of tree-branches.

Kaoru doesn't respond. She doesn't really need to.

"Come dancing with me," Rei says, still looking up, and smirks to no-one in particular. Let Kaoru pick what she wants that to mean today. Rei is just opening the cage door.

"I'm s-" Kaoru begins, and then her expression hardens with the stubbornness which drew Rei to her from the first. "I'm going to need some clothes."

Rei laughs, and laughs, and kisses her again. "Sure you are."

* * *

They are three streets away, and no-one has come to take Kaoru back yet. Henmi is going to have a fit. Too bad for him.

The problem with Henmi is that he isn't a bad person by more or less anyone's standards. But he's boring, by Rei's. There are things he does not, cannot, will never understand; near the top of the list is where he went wrong with Kaoru.

Rei could tell him. If she cared to.

She doesn't. She doesn't care about anything.

Anything at all.

* * *

Perhaps she is just a little bit drunk, but probably not drunk enough. Walking Kaoru back to her lodgings she almost catches up with herself. Getting inside, into the crowded space full of mis-matched furniture, books, empty bottles, she has to head straight to the cabinet and get herself a stiff drink.

Kaoru has one too, but drinks it slower.

She doesn't look as though she's dying, Rei thinks, watching her. She looks as though nothing could kill her. Even though she's pale, even though she's too thin. Even though it's possible to catch the traces of pain on her face if you're watching for them, especially around the eyes, the corners of the mouth.

She has a force of will that seems as though it should be able to overcome anything. Maybe it will.

* * *

Under her coat, ridiculously, Kaoru is wearing night-clothes. They are satin and feminine and they don't suit her; she looks uncomfortable. Rei would pull them off her, tear them apart, if she was feeling a little more perverse. But Kaoru doesn't like her body to be seen in its entirety, as though anyone seeing the effect sickness has had on it will make the sickness real. They will find her something better later.

She pushes the slip up above Kaoru's hips instead, encourages her legs apart, and bends to press her mouth to soft, warm flesh between; hears Kaoru's sharp intake of breath and feels her tremble. Tastes her.

She is not gentle. It isn't in her nature.

Her fingernails mark crescents on Kaoru's hips and thighs. Kaoru, leaning heavily back against Rei's old, battered sofa, responds. Around them, Rei knows, reflections of themselves are moving too, in mirror upon mirror.

* * *

In a man's shirt and trousers Kaoru looks far more like herself, easier and more relaxed. Sexier, too. In the morning she'll go back to the house for treatment and resent the people around her for seeing her weakness on display. Rei lets her show her strength instead. If she's selfish - and she is - that's because Kaoru like that turns her on, but it's also because Kaoru is one of the only people she'd really think of calling a friend, and because (a very private admission) sometimes she can almost look through Kaoru's eyes and see glimpses of whatever it is that people claim makes life worth living.

To say she would die for Kaoru doesn't do much to define her importance, although it's true.

Occasionally she thinks she might live for her. Just maybe.

"Shall we?" Rei says.

They step outside.

[fin]


End file.
